“I did.” He nods, his fingertips tracing along the edge of my hairline.
“He loved our people. So when the funds stopped coming, the businesses shut down, and the people lost their homes… he was sick over it.” I swallow. “He used to hand me bits of money he could scrounge together and warm wool clothes and send me out in the thick of night to take them to people in need.”
“Sounds like a great man.”
“He was.” The knot swells in my throat. “When he died, the grief overwhelmed me, but more than that, I remember drowning in anger.”
“I know that feeling well,” he replies.
“All he wanted was to ask for help.” My teeth clench. “He traveled here to Saxum, and bent the knee, all to beg for your brother to just see us, because for so many years, we’d been brushed aside and forgotten.”
My hand reaches up to cup Tristan’s face, trailing over the raised edges of his scar, feeling the ridges and marred flesh beneath the pads of my fingers. He flinches, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, he leans into it. I flick my gaze to the tattoo on his chest. The hyena on top of bones with a phrase scrawled underneath. I should have known from that alone. I was so enamored with the words, I didn’t take in the rest.
“Coming here was supposed to be vengeance against those who took him from me.”
I expect to see surprise filter through his eyes, but there isn’t any to be found. Just warmth and understanding. It makes holding on to my anger incredibly difficult, and a bit chips away, falling to the ground and smashing into pieces.
“My cousin brought me in to marry your brother… but you know that already, of course.”
His eyes harden, his grip tightening from where it rests on my waist. “He cannot have you.”
“He never will,” I respond, hesitating before I continue. “I saw you when I followed Sheina and Paul last night to the shadowed lands.”
He nods, again with no surprise lighting across his face. “I know.”
Tears well in my eyes, even though I thought they had long since dried. “I saw you, Tristan.”
“I know,” he repeats, his gaze never leaving mine.
“You have my cousin caged.”
His mouth parts then, blowing out a deep breath, his fingers pausing from where they flick against my skin. “Not anymore, little doe.”
My heart stutters, but it’s slight. “You killed him?”
“Would it help if I said he deserved it?”
Maybe I should be enraged, but I’m not. I barely feel anything at all. Truthfully, I was never close with Xander, only having met him once or twice when I was a child. The relationship between us was built on loyalty to family, but as I imagine Tristan ending his life, I can’t find it in me to care.
Turns out, some things bind thicker than blood.
“What did he do?” I ask.
“Killed my father.” He says it with no hesitation, no inflection in his tone. It’s just stated as fact.
The words tremble against the wall that still sits between us, keeping me from giving in to whatever this is. No matter how badly I may want to.
“And you killed mine.”
His brows draw down, eyes flashing.
My hand cups his face. “So, you see, Tristan, I can’t love you. Because loving you means forgetting him.”
“Little doe—”
“Nicknames and sweet words won’t change the truth, okay?” My bottom lip quivers, my sutured-up heart tearing at the seams. I slide from under his grasp and push up on his bed until I’m sitting, slapping my hands down on the mattress. “What else do you want from me? What else can I give? You have taken everything from me, and yet you want my heart too?”
He pounces, his body looming over me, his aura pressing in and his face dark and drawn. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. I want it all. I want everything. I demand it.”
“Well, too bad,” I spit, shoving at his chest.
He grips my wrists before I can move them away and pulls me into him. I kick out, my feet hitting the bone of his shin until he sucks in a hiss, and I flail, trying to break free from his grasp. Chuckling, he tugs me close, rolling us until I’m pinned beneath him, his body weight keeping me flush to the bed. His legs tangle around mine, and his hands push into my arms as he presses them above my head.
It’s a precarious position, and one that has heat spreading through my core and pulsing in my center, whether I want it to or not.
“You are mine, Sara.” He punctuates his words with a sharp thrust of his hips. “And if I have to sink my cock inside of you every morning and spank your ass until it’s bruised every night just so you feel me with every step, that’s what I’ll do.”